Cardiac chloride channels: physiology, pharmacology and approaches for identifying novel modulators of activity

Drugs that block cardiac cation channels have been marketed as the therapeu tic answer to cardiac arrhythmia. However, such molecules have been only mo derately successful at improving the survival of cardiac patients, and so n ew targets have been needed for future antiarrhythmic agents. This article outlines the properties and roles of Cl- channels, which are one of these n ew targets, and describes an approach for identifying novel Cl- channel mod ulators.